Two years ago on Thanksgiving, after finishing our turkey lunch catered by the senior home my grandmother Annie was living in, I took out my iPhone and hit “record.” My grandma was 88, her health declining, but she was having a good day with all her family visiting. So I moved my chair close to her and asked the questions I had planned. I wanted to hear about her past, the stories that had been seared in her memory, the moments that had shaped her.

Grandma had always been a natural storyteller, and she had shared bits and pieces about her childhood in wartime Liverpool with my sister and me in the past. But this interview was special. She talked about being seven years old and standing on an orange crate in her parents’ laundromat, ironing shirts for customers. She told us about how she escaped an impending arranged marriage to be with the love of her life—my grandfather. She described how they moved to America and lived in the storage room of her uncle-in-law’s restaurant.

My grandma passed away just two months after that conversation. I edited some clips of the interview to play at her memorial service. Here it is if you’d like to take a listen:

As Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps has said, “The soul is contained in the human voice.” There’s something magical about an audio recording of a person you love, something that’s different from a video. When interviewing my grandmother, I used the tools offered by StoryCorps’ The Great Thanksgiving Listen, a movement that encourages people to create an oral history of the United States by recording an interview with an elder.

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Want to give it a try? Choose a person you’d like to interview, and go for it.

Some recording and interview tips:

Prepare some questions beforehand, but leave room in your conversation for surprises. StoryCorps has a massive list of questions to help your interviewee open up. Some good universal ones: Who has been the most important person in your life? What was the happiest moment of your life? The saddest? Who has been the biggest influence on your life? Who has been the kindest to you in your life? What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life? What is your earliest memory? What is your favorite memory of me?

Get your recording equipment ready. That could just be your phone. There’s a free app for The Great Thanksgiving Listen that easily records your conversation and archives it at the Library of Congress and on the StoryCorps website, but you can also use another app like Voice Memo, or an actual recorder for better quality audio.

Find a quiet, comfortable place and start recording. Then ask your questions, and listen closely as your loved one tells your their story.